That's sort of how it works here. The Singaporean housing market is divided into HDB (public housing) and Condo (private housing). Condo's nowadays start at around SGD 1m for something small and basic, but aren't such a bad deal with banks charging interest of just 1.8% on a 40 year loan. Most Singaporeans can't afford this with an average monthly wage of just SGD 2,000 per month.
Public housing on the other hand is heavily subsidised and somewhat controlled for PRs and citizens. FYI Singapore was a giant slum up until the government formed the HDB board in the 1960s. The CPF (Singapore's retirement fund) can be used as a deposit against your apartment which nowadays start at SGD 300,000 if you go far from the city. As you can guess, this results in many people having a lot of cash tied up in non-liquid assets when they retire that leads to a host of other issues.
I moved to Singapore 3 years ago from Australia and love the place and prefer life here to Hong Kong any day.
Public housing on the other hand is heavily subsidised and somewhat controlled for PRs and citizens. FYI Singapore was a giant slum up until the government formed the HDB board in the 1960s. The CPF (Singapore's retirement fund) can be used as a deposit against your apartment which nowadays start at SGD 300,000 if you go far from the city. As you can guess, this results in many people having a lot of cash tied up in non-liquid assets when they retire that leads to a host of other issues.
I moved to Singapore 3 years ago from Australia and love the place and prefer life here to Hong Kong any day.